“Three more fucking weeks,” Hollis complains.
“And you broke your ankle on a job?” Nash asks.
Hollis nods. “I'd like to tell you guys that I hurt myself being a badass in some epic fucking fight scene, rescuing that last girl, but I stepped off the porch the wrong way and snapped my ankle.”
Both Nash and I laugh.
“That's usually how it goes,” I say, a genuine smile on my face for the first time today. Getting at least some kind of injury while working is pretty normal for our line of work.
“What did Angel say about it?” Nash asks.
“Not a fucking thing,” Hollis says. “It's not like we have workers' comp or medical insurance in the job that we do.”
“I'm surprised he didn't ask you what time you were returning to work,” Nash says, his eyes once again on the brunette playing in the sand as if it isn’t obvious that she’s vying for the attention of every man around her.
I have to laugh and look over at Nash. “If you think he cares if we're working or not, you're sadly mistaken. That man doesn't need us.”
I don't know why my eyes lock on the blonde, twenty feet down the beach.
I wouldn't consider myself a people watcher, although I do notice everything going on around me. It's a skill I've mastered and an extremely necessary one in our line of work.
I don't know that I've ever considered any twenty-something-year-old female demure, but that's exactly what she is. Maybe that's why she stands out.
Maybe that's why I can't seem to take my eyes off her.
I'm just glad that it seems like I'm looking in Nash's direction rather than staring at this woman.
Her one-piece bathing suit fits like a glove.
It leaves a lot to the imagination.
It makes me curious.
Every woman here wants attention, and they're getting it by wearing the skimpiest bikinis imaginable.
They don't care that there are families here.
They don't care that there are children playing in the surf and building sandcastles.
Family vacations and laughter don't matter to them.
A lot of these women not only don't give a shit about the people staring at them, but they also encourage it. They crave it.
They want the men to look at them regardless of their relationship status. If a man looking at them has a wedding ring on their finger, even better.
They want to know that their body, their laughter, the way the sun glints off their hair, and the way that the sand sticks to their skin makes an otherwise faithful man look in their direction.
It's the highest compliment, isn’t it? What says I’m the hottest girl on the beach other than a man, who should be paying attention to his wife and children, who's staring at them.
It's what makes men like the one I used to be want to snatch them up. It makes them want to break them. Makes them want to prove that they’re the ones in control.
Bad men desire women like the one in the white bikini. It does something to their brain that tells them they have to have what she’s offering. In their minds, it’s not only attention those women seek, and even if it is, they’re going to get that attention in whatever way the devious man decides. A beautiful woman brings a lot of money on the black market.
The woman in the white bikini that Nash can’t seem to pull his eyes from heightens that instinct for me as well, but for some reason, the blonde in the modest bathing suit somehow does the same thing, but on a different level.
Almost anyone here can have the brunette.
The blonde? She's a challenge. It would take work to get that woman alone.